OCON 2025 - Application of an Idea #3
Big Swings
On July 3rd, the CEO of the Ayn Rand Institute did what great CEOs do. Tal Tsfany delivered a clear vision for the long-term success of ARI’s mission – the principles of Objectivism as the driving force of Western culture. Why not all cultures? Because it is a waste of energy to project our rationality on everyone. How do we know? Because reason is not automatic.
To drive home the message, Tal began with a baseball metaphor - Big Swings. And he continued with Ayn Rand’s story about Dagny Taggart finding Hugh Akston at his mountaintop diner: the food was the best she had ever tasted, it was made from the simplest ingredients, but when Dagny met the philosopher of reason, it did not make any sense. He replied, “Are you sure?”
While the contradictions were compounding for Dagny, Akston understood both Dagny’s dilemma and her false premises. And because he was intolerant of contradictions, Akston had taken the Big Swing and escaped a society gone mad.
As mentioned in the previous essay, we are not at the stage for breaking with society altogether, but it is necessary to break all ties with the culture of altruism. And as Tal structured his message,
The challenge is philosophical and we must be selective with our chosen audience.
The time frame is long term and we will always be at work.
The approach is uncompromising and the path to success will be truth.
He then described the essential leadership needed from both the philosophical intellectuals and the intellectual businessmen – what Ayn Rand called The New Intellectual and about whom she titled her first book of non-fiction in 1961. But this time, Tal told the true story about Leonard Peikoff and Ed Snider establishing the Ayn Rand Institute in 1985.
For those of us in the audience, participating remotely, watching on YouTube, reading Rand’s books, or this essay, the question becomes: “how do we become radicals for capitalism?” Of course, the place to start is introspection inspired by Rand, “the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity and reason as his only absolute.”
Accordingly, the audience for The Moneyball Method is the individual who desires a philosophy for important decisions that require money – Part I. One who will adopt the entrepreneurial mindset of vision, calculated risks and becoming your own hero – Part II. And whose performance benchmark is their life – Part III.
Borrowing the baseball metaphor of Big Swings, that means intolerance of the contradictions and replacing them with the best food you’ve tasted from the simplest ingredients. To learn more, please click the link below:
https://www.amazon.com/Moneyball-Method-Middle-Class-Manifesto-Objective/dp/1696009111/